Find the latest developments in the field of inorganic chemistry

The important research results of inorganic chemistry since the twentieth century are described as follows:

Noble gas compounds.

Rare gas chemistry can be said to have risen from the deserted academic desert, which has broken some of people's previous rule-based cognitions and played a strong role in promoting the development of inorganic chemistry, especially fluorine chemistry. These are noble gas compounds.

To understand the importance of the synthesis of noble gas compounds, it is important to first understand why noble gases are difficult to form stable compounds. Noble gases are all in the form of monoatomic molecules. The electron shell of noble gas atoms is closed-shell, the s orbital and the p orbital are in a full state, the electron affinity energy is extremely low, and the ionization energy is very high, which determines their surprisingly inert nature in chemical reactions (the valence electrons in the heavier noble gases are farther away from the nucleus, so it is easier for the japonja to break away from the nucleus).

The ionization energy of noble gases is the largest in each cycle, which reflects the stability of their electronic configuration and also leads to their chemical inactivity). This made the initial attempts to obtain the noble gas by separating the compound hit the nail on the head.

Inorganic crystalline materials.

Laser technology is a new technology that originated in the sixties of the twentieth century and has been greatly developed in the next three decades. Laser technology can be called a revolutionary achievement of traditional optical technology, laser beam has outstanding performance in directionality, coherence, monochromaticity and high energy storage, so that it is no longer a thing in the laboratory, it has a wide range of applications in medicine, national defense, industry and agriculture and other fields.

The development of laser is inextricably linked to crystals, which have nonlinear optical effects. The reason is that the laser itself only provides a high-intensity light source, and can only be used as a confidence transmission medium or energy source after a certain frequency conversion, frequency modulation, phase modulation, and adjustment of polarization direction of the light source. This task is mostly completed by some nonlinear optical crystals, and the status of such crystals is also increasing day by day, and the search for new materials with excellent performance and wider spectrum has become the focus of inorganic materials research.

Inorganic chemistry, this should start with the concept.

If you look at it literally, inorganic chemistry should be the opposite of organic chemistry, and it should be a "discipline that studies inorganic substances". However, if you look at the textbook of inorganic chemistry, it usually contains some or all of the following contents:

Early Chemical Phenomena and Theories + Elemental Knowledge + Fundamentals of Quantum Chemistry + Fundamentals of Thermodynamics + Complex Theory (in fact, it is also an application of quantum chemistry).

Therefore, the knowledge structure of inorganic chemistry is almost the least systematic among the four major chemistries. In terms of research trends, there are very few research groups that only do inorganic research, even if they call themselves inorganic chemistry. There are two main reasons for this:

At the experimental level, organic chemistry has so much to offer inorganic chemists. Organic chemists have accumulated extensive experience in compound synthesis and functional group modification. Nature has suggested that the most suitable element for building compounds with rich and diverse structures is carbon.

Therefore, for inorganic chemists, a more convenient research idea is to use the existing techniques and methods in organic chemistry to synthesize organic compounds, and then combine them into new compounds through coordination or other interactions and inorganic substances (such as metal ions, etc.). And because organic compounds are easy to modify, it is relatively easy to change the properties of these new compounds.

From the theoretical level, almost all current chemical theories are based on quantum mechanics + statistical mechanics if they can be traced back to their origins. Therefore, if inorganic chemists want to have a deep understanding of existing inorganic chemistry theories, or create new inorganic chemistry theories, they must find explanations of their theories at the level of quantum mechanics or statistical mechanics. Therefore, it can be said that there is no independent theory of inorganic chemistry at all, and what inorganic chemists can do is to apply quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics to the study of inorganic chemistry.

To sum up, the current situation of inorganic chemistry is that it strives to draw on the experience of organic chemistry and biological systems at the experimental level, and relies on quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics at the theoretical level, so it seems to be very lacking in the independence of the discipline, but there is no doubt that inorganic chemistry must still be developing.